SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



69 



The remains of a pigmy species of hippopotamus. 

 Hippopotamus pentlandi, have been found in great 

 abundance in nearly every part of the island. 

 The geographical range of this river horse seems to 

 have extended as far east as Peloponnesus ; and 

 it has been found in such quantities in the caves 

 of Palermo that its remains were exported by the 

 shipload for the manufacture of lamp-black. 

 Bears, foxes, wolves, deer, dormice as large as 



guinea-pigs, huge tortoises equal in size to those 

 now found in the Galapagos Islands, lizards 

 larger than those now found in northern Africa, 

 chameleons, and an assortment of the remains of 

 monster swans, vultures and other birds, are a few 

 of the many relics of Malta's past that have been 

 unearthed from the Pleistocene deposits of the 

 islands. 



(To be continued.) 



VESPA AUSTRIACA, A CUCKOO-WASP. 



By Charles Robson. 



HPOWARDS the close of 1897, as I was naming 

 my few specimens of social and solitary 

 bees with the aid of Mr. Saunders' beautifully 

 illustrated work ( 1 ), I thought I would pass in 

 review my social wasps (Vespae) in the light of his 

 descriptions and illustrations of the several species. 

 I had already named them, when engaged more 

 especially upon their study in the early eighties, 

 from Ormerod's monograph ( 2 ), than which one 

 needs no better introduction and guide. Whilst 

 thus occupied, great and agreeable was my surprise 

 to find that I was in possession of a handsome 

 perfect female, or queen, of the comparatively rare 

 Vespa austriaca Panz. = arborea Smith, which had 

 been taken late in July, or in the beginning of 

 August, 1887, at Harnham, Northumberland, 

 and from its close general resemblance to a 

 young queen of V. rufa, Linn., had been put 

 aside as such in my collection of unmounted 

 insects. I found also a second though sadly 

 mutilated female of the same species which had 

 been obtained under peculiar circumstances on 

 July 22nd in the same year and at the same place, 

 and which was the only wasp I had that season 

 mounted. Saunders in his work says (pp. 148-9) 

 that " the habits of V. austriaca Panz. (= arborea 

 Smith) are not yet fully understood, only males 

 and females are known ; and Schmiedeknect has 

 suggested the possibility of its being an inquiline 

 species living with other wasps, as Psithyrus does 

 with Bombus ; but at present I think there is no 

 direct evidence to prove this, although the theory 

 is ingenious and very far from improbable." On 

 reading this I was something more than disgusted 

 to find what a splendid possible opportunity I had 

 lost of having been enabled to fully and satis- 

 factorily determine this moot point, as well as 

 having, I believe, been the first to capture the 

 male of this wasp in Britain ; since heretofore, 

 according to Saunders (p. 155), "only females have 



(!) "The Hymenoptera Aculeata of the British Islands," 

 by Edward Saunders, F.L.S., London, 1896. 



( 2 ) "British Social Wasps ; " by Edward Lathom Ormerod, 

 M.D., London, 1868. 



occurred in Britain " (*). For, the above-mentioned 

 dead and mutilated female or queen of the V. 

 austriaca I had seen dragged out from the burrow 

 leading to the nest cavity of a colony of the V. rufa 

 by one of the workers, and had secured both insects 

 as soon as they were wholly free of the entrance; 

 though at the moment I only thought this was the 

 foundress, or queen V. rufa, of the nest, which had 

 died from disease or exhaustion and was thus being 

 disposed of, as my notes on the subject quoted as 

 follows will show. 



"July 22nd, 1887. — To-day, at 3 pm, as I sat 

 by the side of the nest of the Vespa rufa in the east 

 dyke of the hayfield, I observed a worker-wasp 

 dragging out with much labour another wasp ; and 

 on securing it and its burthen, I found the latter 

 to be the headless, wingless and forelimbless 

 carcase of a queen wasp, which was still soft and 

 limp. Just a stump of the wings remained, they 

 having obviously been bitten off. Is it the carcase 

 of the foundress queen ? Has she died and 

 been decapitated and otherwise mutilated in the 

 endeavour to remove her from the nest ? If so, 

 and other of the large, for they are here large and 

 handsome, imperfect females or workers are con- 

 strained to lay ova, we shall probably only have 

 drone brood in time, unless perfect female or 

 queen brood is already in the comb. Possibly, 

 however, the queen is spent, and the colony 

 nearing its consummation. Nevertheless, food is 

 being carried in, and substances out, briskly ; and 

 the nest is a fairly strong one. The hole of 

 entrance to the nest cavity, or mouth of the burrow, 

 is nearly circular, and is about three-fourths of an 

 inch in diameter." 



So much for my first note on the subject. The 

 nest was allowed to remain undisturbed, the in- 

 tention being to secure it, if possible, later on in the 

 season, when perchance it might reveal something 

 interesting relating to parihenogenesis, illustrated 

 in this instance by the development of male or 



( 3 ) We believe a male of this wasp was taken by the Rev 

 O. Pickard-Cambridge in Dorsetshire and recorded Septem- 

 ber, iBc,6 (vol. vii. p. 2:2, Ent. Mon. Mag.).— J. T. C.j 



